It’s the awkward morning after the day before at Howards End (BBC One). Actually, at Oniton in Shropshire – it’s hard to keep up with the Wilcox’s property portfolio, I know. Oniton is in “the wrong part of Shropshire” it turns out, mainly because of a lack of game; it looks pretty nice to me, pheasants or not.

We’re there for silly Evie Wilcox’s wedding, remember? And for our three families – Wilcoxes, Schlegels and Basts – to collide, dramatically and drastically. And for Henry Wilcox’s dirty secret past, with Jacky in Cyprus, to catch up with him, for which he has told Margaret she is released from their engagement. Now the two of them are having breakfast together, awkwardly.

For Margaret it’s not all over, she is prepared to overlook something that happened long before they even met. He can’t even look at her, let alone talk about it. The scene lasts about four minutes, which might not sound long but four minutes is a long time in TV drama, especially when it’s just two people not saying very much. But actually there is loads going on here, about who they are, where they’re from and what they think: she is generous and forgiving and is led by her heart and intellect; he is cold and stuffed up and conventional, feeling doesn’t come easily.

I’ve heard a few moans about the pace of Kenneth Lonergan’s adaptation. But the pace, and the long scenes, are a big part of its strength; it’s bold rather than ponderous. The moaners maybe expected more frocks and bonnets, carriages, chaps on horses, heaving chests, upstairs-downstairs, will-they-won’t-they (get married). Downton, in a word. There is a bit of that going on here: pretty frocks, handsome country houses, hansom cabs, now the occasional motorcar. Lovely period detail, but it doesn’t feel as if it’s the centre of attention, which in my book (adaptation) is a good thing. This is about bigger, more important things: people and ideas.

A load has already been said about the relevance of Howards End today, with the changing world, widening wealth divide, lack of social mobility, etc. This deftly tosses race in there as well, adding without interfering or taking anything away. But what it has done best of all is characters and the relationships between them, not just between the families and their social strata, but within them, too. And particularly between Margaret and Helen Schlegel, of course, for which Hayley Atwell and Philippa Coulthard need a cheer. As well as all the A-level English themes, class and culture, connecting, gender roles, it has been a wonderful portrait of two women, two sisters, very different, but also very much part of each other.

Shout out to Alex Lawther as little brother Tibby, too, for providing pretty much the only thin seam of humour. Tibby is now learning Chinese, of course.

Back in the breakfast room, after a small distraction about a little gong, which came from Harrods, Margaret gets Henry back again. The wedding will go ahead, later it gets 25 seconds of screen time, really just to illustrate a line in a letter Margaret is writing to Helen. Four minutes for awkward breakfast, less than half for nuptials. In Downton, the wedding would have taken up half the episode, with bridesmaids and tears, the works. Different priorities. This is Howards End (and it really is, Lonergan says that three quarters of the words are cut straight from the novel, Filet o’ Forster). Downton is more like Howards’ Way.

While Margaret and Henry are breakfasting, Helen is waking to another kind of awkwardness: uh-oh, she’s pregnant. Via Leonard Bast, while Jacky was upstairs in bed, feeling poorly (as well as poor). Being pregnant while single was very awkward a century ago, even for an enlightened, progressive Schlebel; she has to disappear to Germany to hide her shame, only returning when Aunt Juley is poorly, too. Which leads back to Howards End and another, even more fateful meeting between the three families. In a rare moment of action, Charles Wilcox knocks a bookshelf over while thrashing Leonard for his caddishness, and that’s it, Leonard’s End. Killed by books – there’s irony there; that’ll teach him.

On the plus side, the ghastly Charles is later sent to prison and Margaret gets the house as she was meant to all along.

Just the one moan, the usual one: music. Too loud, too much, too omnipresent. A little silence would have suited this Howards End well. Otherwise it has been a treat. What it lacked in rollicking, it made up for with thoughtfulness, humanity, wit and words. And timelessness; don’t forget impending doom in Europe ...